Thirteen Shells Read online

  Also by Nadia Bozak

  Fiction

  Orphan Love

  El Niño

  Non-fiction

  The Cinematic Footprint: Lights, Camera, Natural Resources

  Thirteen Shells

  Nadia Bozak

  Copyright © 2016 Nadia Bozak

  Published in Canada in 2016 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

  www.houseofanansi.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the author’s rights.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Bozak, Nadia, author

  Thirteen shells / Nadia Bozak.

  Short stories.

  Issued in print and electronic formats.

  ISBN 978-1-77089-987-2 (paperback).—ISBN 978-1-77089-988-9 (ePub)

  I. Title.

  PS8603.O998T45 2016 C813'.6 C2015-907619-6 C2015-907620-X

  Cover design: Alysia Shewchuk

  Cover image: © Alberto Bernasconi

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

  While parts of this book are adapted from childhood

  memories, it is fundamentally a work of fiction.

  I dedicate this book:

  To my dad:

  a gifted artist and craftsman

  who taught me to never give up.

  To Michelle Lundy:

  a true friend who truly sparkles.

  CONTENTS

  Greener Grass

  Fiddleheads

  Please Don’t Pass Me By

  Tooth Fairy

  Children of the Corn

  Fair Trade

  Frozen Fish

  Snow Tire

  Hole in the Wall

  She Will Make Music Wherever She Goes

  Jesse

  Left Luggage

  New Roof

  Acknowledgements

  Permissions

  About the Author

  About the Publisher

  The beauty of a shell is rarely evident

  when taken from the water.

  — Helen S. O’Brien, Shell Album

  Greener Grass

  The one-floor rental where Shell was born is too close to the tracks — Shell’s the only girl or boy around not allowed to lay pennies on the rails so the double-engine CNs can turn them into wafers — and even with the add-on studio at the back, Dad and Mum don’t have enough room to do their pottery. Dad gets a pretty good council grant, finally, so they start looking for something else. Further east, near the fairgrounds and the factories, and maybe they can even buy.

  Dad promises one day they’ll get out of Somerset and go back to Toronto, where Mum and Dad got married, though there are no pictures in any albums or steamer trunks of Mum in a gauzy white dress and Dad with a tie and red rose and neither of them wear a ring. Mum says Somerset is the perfect size for a city. “You can borrow an egg from your neighbour, just like on the Prairies,” and also there’s a movie theatre with black-and-whites like Mr. Hulot, which Mum and Shell saw on a Saturday afternoon.

  Dad, though, says Somerset is small-town in the way it thinks. “A million miles away from Toronto,” even though the drive to the Toronto Zoo is only about two hours. The cars on the spaghetti of highways to get there are so much faster than their bouncy Dodge Dart. The kids staring back at Shell instead of at the gorillas wear T-shirts with spaceships and for sports teams Shell’s never heard of; the toys they drag around are bought in boxes at department stores. When the sun’s gone down and Dad finally clicks onto the exit ramp back to Somerset, something becomes less tight in the Dart and in Shell — like seeing Mum after a morning at Montessori two times a week. Shell waves at the smoky factories and rusty railroad tracks, the quiet streets with the lit-up bikes and big kids on front steps.

  Shell has never been down Cashel Street.

  “Cashew Street?” Shell asks. But Mum and Dad are busy pointing at Princess Anne Public School on the corner, the Bun King at the lights, also there’s a library and plenty of droopy oaks and stiff maples planted on the boulevard. There are two churches in just one block. Mum’s sure one will have a Brownie troop. Lawns are short and green and the houses small because they were built after wartime. People didn’t have so many pairs of shoes or colouring books to put away.

  Halfway down the second block, Dad slows the car, pointing out a two-storey red-brick house. The homemade sign pounded into a patch of dry garden plot declares the house for sale by owner.

  “Of course, there’s no phone number,” says Mum. “I just hate that.”

  Dad parks the Dodge Dart right in front. Except for the car’s speckled rust, its yellow is the same deep mustard as the boulevard grass. The blades break beneath Shell’s sandals when she jumps down from the car and into the strong jiggle of Mum’s open arms.

  Hands on hips, sneakers planted wide, Dad surveys the length of the sloped tarmac drive, at the end of which, beyond a chain-link fence and a gnarled lawn, is a wide garage. The double doors are rolled open; the pair of bright school buses inside are parked face out. Shell starts kindergarten in September, but Mum promised it will be at a school close enough they can walk there and back together.

  “Why?” Shell asked.

  “Because buses like those don’t have seat belts.”

  “So?”

  “So they’re not safe.” But sometimes Mum doesn’t buckle in either, and —

  Dad goes up the front steps first, Mum and Shell behind. Rotten wood springs back under their feet and the handrail wiggles.

  “Careful,” says Dad. And then: “Don’t say anything about the pottery, okay?”

  Mum tells Shell, “Look with your eyes, Shell. This won’t take long.”

  Shell nods. All of their living room furniture could fit on the front porch — couch, chairs, stereo, Dad’s sculpture of the giant clay horse head — and still have space left over. The thick honeysuckle climbing the trellis at the far end hums with yellow jackets, the worst kind of bees for hiding in rubber gloves and the toes of running shoes.

  Dad’s knuckles are sharp on the aluminum door. His hands make goggles around his glasses as he peers inside the screen. Stepping back, he smoothes his beard; Mum straightens both her spine and the billow of her blouse. From between the curtains of Mum’s wide trousers, Shell eyes the bees.

  “Don’t you go near that vine, Shell,” Mum says.

  Dad raises his hand again but stops when a figure pops up behind the screen. The boy’s face is meshed in shadow. But his bottle of Mountain Dew is visible, as is a pale blue T-shirt, the gaping arm holes of which reveal a red pepperoni of nipple each time he drinks. The boy’s eyes shift from Dad to Mum. And then they find Shell peeking out from behind Mum’s pant legs. Without looking away, he calls for Gary to come: “Gare, there’s people want to see the house.” Again and again: “Gare.”

  The door moans when the boy opens it then slams fast, caught in an inward gust. The boy, standing there, is about nine. He hooks his shoulder blades on the edge of the railing and leans back into t
he pain. A deep scar splits the boy’s top lip in half, pulling it up into his right nostril and pinching it there as with a safety pin. He must have to really brush and floss, because no matter how hard he tries, he cannot hide his top row of blunt teeth. A snarling skull, he is, like there’s just not enough skin to make a full hood of lip. Somehow the boy swigs Mountain Dew without a dribble.

  “Mmmmm,” he breathes, too loud. “We drive all the way to the States for this,” he says of the pop. The passage of his hand over his cloven lip leaves behind a trail of motor grease.

  His eyes flick as the screen door wrenches outward. The thick caramel arm that holds it open belongs to a big man in overalls with a shark fin for a nose. Shark Nose has black nails. A hammer hangs from a loop at his hip. He wipes his free hand on his denim front and shakes with Dad, who asks for a look at the house. Mum’s fingers curl into Shell’s. And she is tugged inside. The boy’s flat grey eyes hold tight to Shell, who squeezes her top lip hard between her fingers.

  Shark Nose says there’s hardwood under all the dirty carpet. “Place is solid.”

  The main floor is as jumbled as a desk drawer, and the only place to sit is on one of five folding chairs tucked into a card table in the dining room. The orange plastic tablecloth glows like a Creamsicle against the chimney-sweep surroundings.

  “Everything works,” Shark Nose says to Mum, waving her through to the kitchen. Mum’s not looking at Shark Nose, like she doesn’t look at Dad when his voice gets big.

  “Nothing fancy,” says Shark Nose.

  Uncooked rice speckles the linoleum floor, which is way stickier than when Shell spilled the syrup. Up on the countertop there’s a coffee urn the size of Mum’s Filter Queen and the biggest box of Alpha-Bits.

  The stairs to the basement are dark. The air tastes like the mushrooms Dad gathers along the train tracks and sautés for Friday night omelettes. At the bottom, Shark Nose pulls on a string dangling from the ceiling. A light comes on. Dad and Mum are not nearly as tall as Shark Nose, yet they too must stoop beneath the ceiling. The three grown-ups move like roosters along the crates of empty glass bottles — Sprite, Mountain Dew, Coke, Export stubbies — that partition off a bedroom. Four roll-away beds are lined up beneath a pair of muddy windows dimmed by uncut grass. Each mattress is wrapped in an unzipped sleeping bag, a crisp white sheet folded over like some dads have their shirt cuffs.

  The ceiling lets out a long, creaky ripple. Mum’s and Dad’s eyebrows rise above their glasses as they follow the footsteps along the rafters. They look like brother and sister with the same full curls and heavy glasses, and maybe they are, because along with no matching gold rings they don’t ever hug or kiss — or hold hands like mums and dads in the park or at the fair. Even in her Egypt sandals, Mum is taller than Dad. Her braids are long and thick. Everything about Mum is big and strong — except her voice. It is a bird outside the window, not quite there. Everyone goes, “Pardon me?” when Mum says something.

  The ceiling stops creaking. Next comes growly laughter and snake-sounding words that make Dad frown. Shark Nose grins a bit and points at the beds. “Don’t mind them up there. Just my boys.”

  The toilet under the stairs has for a doorknob a diamond that’s baseball big. While Mum and Dad consider the washer and dryer that come with the sale, Shell traces the knob’s jewelled facets.

  “…but we just can’t fight off the damp,” Shark Nose is saying to Dad but not Mum. “And these foster kids tend to have asthma.” He, Shark Nose, really thought he’d done up the basement okay for them, but still they get sick.

  Dad follows Shark Nose through the backyard to the garage while Shell tugs Mum towards the red swing set in the neighbour’s yard, on the other side of a high fence. Mum, though, is watching the boy. He crouches at the base of a dense black walnut, the empty pop bottle pressed hard between his knees like he’s trying to burst it. The walnut’s branches ensnare the power lines above and its fallen balls of hard green fruit stain a patch of concrete that might once have been a patio. Shell follows his eyes, which are on Dad and Shark Nose as they near the garage.

  Of the two school buses inside, one has its engine torn out. Silver tools and blackened rags and drink cans litter the concrete floor, and a picture of an orange lady in a bathing suit hangs beside a dull stainless steel sink. Dad hitches up his jeans and disappears into the brush that grows thick between the garage and the neighbour’s stretch of chain-link. A fit of barking erupts. Mum almost breaks Shell’s fingers, she squeezes so hard. Ever since a needle-nosed mutt chased them all the way up their street and clamped its jaws on Mum’s bell-bottoms, Mum carries a thick wooden chair leg in her bike basket. Shell had been strapped behind Mum in the carrier seat. Mum’s long braids were, like Shell’s, ribboned at the ends. The world was bobbing by — train tracks, Kit-Kat store, lace curtains, autumn leaves raked up like bowls and bowls of salad. Then the dog came tearing alongside, nails clipping the ground, orange eyes to match its coat. Mum shouted — screamed — and the bike had careened, nearly skidding out. Then the dog caught Mum’s pants in its teeth. The fabric ripped to the knee. Shell was crying, her helmeted head weighing heavy on her neck. But Mum kept on going. She pedalled hard and got three streets over before she stopped and turned around. “Don’t tell your dad,” Mum said, her eyes wet and nostrils trembling.

  Behind the garage, Dad whistles sharp enough to split ice. The dogs go quiet. When Dad comes back out, there are leaves in his beard and bright beads of garnet squeeze through a scratch along his forearm.

  “Imagine the garden I could put in here,” he whispers, holding in his smile.

  Dad asks to see the roof. Shark Nose calls to the boy, who shoves the pop bottle into the back pocket of his loose jeans. They carry a ladder from the garage like it’s a coffin. Shell counts the ribs — four — that show through the boy’s gaping arm hole. Dad jams the ladder into the ground before he climbs it, ducking low sweeps of walnut branch. Mum and Shark Nose squint up into a bright ball of western sun. The boy is gone. Though Shell feels the pull of the swing set through the fence, she stays near Mum.

  “Shingles’re new,” Shark Nose calls to Dad, hooking his thumbs into his pockets. “Me and the boys laid them not a year ago.”

  Dad lifts his glasses and peers down the tin chimney. He pencils something in his notebook then crouches down and scans the eavestrough. Behind Shell there is a soft belch. A shadow cools her back.

  “There’s all kinds of junk buried back here,” the boy says. He was hiding under the low bush behind Mum, a cloud of red blossom. It must be his lip that wets his words with slur. “Here in the dirt, under where we’re standing. You’ll see.” The touch of his finger on Shell’s bare shoulder is warm and firm. Just as Shell and Mum turn around, he pulls back his arm and tosses away his pop bottle. It twirls, bottom over top, and lands with a thud in the tall grass, among the fallen walnuts. Shell waits for it to break, yearns for it, but the sound does not come.

  Up on the peak of the roof, the sun blanks Dad’s heavy glasses. “Hey fella,” he hollers. “Pick up that bottle.”

  “Huh?” The boy squints up at Dad.

  “Go on.” Dad’s voice is sharp. His beard juts out as he points to where the bottle landed. “Can’t litter like that.”

  Shell mouths the word “litterbug” so only she can hear. In Montessori they sat in a circle and recited, “Pick it up!” and “Don’t be a litterbug,” while the teacher thumped notes on the wood piano.

  The boy shrugs.

  Up above them, Dad widens his stance. Then he makes for the ladder.

  “You heard the man,” Shark Nose shouts. “On with it.”

  Bowing his head, the boy walks the yard, scanning for the bottle. Red flush crawls up the back of his neck into the jagged edge of his hairline. His sneakers crunch the dry grass and then there is a too-long sigh as he bends over.

  “Okay?” he says to Dad, holding up
the bottle. But Dad is already stepping down the ladder, his back turned.

  Mum walks Shell out to the car. Several steps back, Dad and Shark Nose talk, arms crossed, looking down at each other’s shoes. Canvas sneakers to leather boots. The boy and his bottle are so close behind Shell, she switches to Mum’s other hand, finding it just as wet.

  “Hippie,” the boy whispers, tramping the back of Shell’s heel. “Stupidassholehippiedad.”

  Shell takes two steps inside of one, stumbling. Mum pulls her back to her feet, wrenching Shell’s arm in its socket.

  “Don’t look at him, Shell,” Mum says, quiet but hard. “He’s just waiting to get a rise out of you.”

  Mum and Shell stand in the shadow of the locked Dart. The boy sits on the front steps, his elbows propped behind him. His eyes are not really closed — the lids flicker, watching. His teeth must get so dry and dirty, exposed to all that air and bugs all the time. That’s why his words are so ugly, so mean.

  “That garage’ll make a fantastic studio,” Dad says, tucking his notebook into his shirt pocket and getting in the driver’s seat. He leans over and opens Mum’s door from the inside because the handle is broken. Mum’s going on about getting away from those damn tracks. Imagine an entire night without being rattled and hooted awake. She clips Shell’s seat belt; her dark, coarse hair has escaped its elastic, falling over her face. If Shell were to reach up and take off Mum’s heavy glasses, Mum would be someone so much lighter she might just float away from Dad and Shell and the Dodge Dart and get lost in the clouds she sings about when she puts on Joni Mitchell.

  Dad’s glasses occupy the rear-view mirror. “We can get a couple of kilns in there. Hey? That chimney’s good to ventilate.” In Dad’s side mirror, the boy moves across the front lawn. Hidden muscles swell in his arms. The Mountain Dew bottle dangles from a crooked middle finger. When he takes it up, full in his grip, Mum and Dad are busy talking about bank loans and reasonable offers. Dad pulls slowly away from the red-brick house. And slowly the boy in the mirror raises his arm, pop bottle wielded. Shell sinks low in her seat, covering her face so shattered glass won’t poke her eyes or slice her nose when the bottle comes crashing through the rear windshield.